The MCITP: Database Administrator 2008 certification requires two exams to achieve this certification 70-433 & 70-451.
Students take both of these test onsite at our training facility while attending our course. Below are the objectives of these exams as presented by Microsoft.
Implementing Tables and Views
Create and alter tables.
This objective may include but is not limited to: computed and persisted columns; schemas; scripts to deploy changes to multiple environments, for example, dev, test, production; manage permissions (GRANT, DENY, REVOKE)
Create and alter views.
This objective may include but is not limited to: WITH ENCRYPTION; WITH SCHEMABINDING; WITH CHECK OPTION; manage permissions (GRANT, DENY, REVOKE)
Create and alter indexes.
This objective may include but is not limited to: filtered, included columns, unique, clustered, non-clustered, FILL FACTOR; CREATE STATISTICS; indexing views
Create and modify constraints.
This objective may include but is not limited to: PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY, UNIQUE, CHECK, cascading referential integrity, enabling/disabling, NOCHECK; SET IDENTITY_INSERT
Implement data types.
This objective may include but is not limited to: FILESTREAM; spatial, structured, and semi-structured; collations
Implement partitioning solutions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: partitioned tables and indexes (constraints, partition functions, partition schemes, MERGE, SPLIT, SWITCH); distributed partitioned views (constraints, linked servers)
Implementing Programming Objects
Create and alter stored procedures.
This objective may include but is not limited to: table-valued parameters (TVPs), EXECUTE AS, RECOMPILE, parameter direction (output); WITH ENCRYPTION; manage permissions (GRANT, DENY, REVOKE)
Create and alter user-defined functions (UDFs).
This objective may include but is not limited to: WITH SCHEMABINDING, EXECUTE AS; manage permissions (GRANT, DENY, REVOKE)
Create and alter DML triggers.
This objective may include but is not limited to: INSERTED, DELETED, INSTEAD OF, EXECUTE AS
Create and alter DDL triggers.
This objective may include but is not limited to: enabling/disabling; return event data
Create and deploy CLR-based objects.
This objective may include but is not limited to: permission sets (SAFE, UNSAFE, EXTERNAL_ACCESS), SET TRUSTWORTHY
Implement error handling.
This objective may include but is not limited to: TRY/CATCH, RAISERROR, retrieving error information, custom error messages, @@ERROR
Manage transactions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: BEGIN TRANSACTION, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL
Working with Query Fundamentals
Query data by using SELECT statements.
This objective may include but is not limited to: LIKE, WHERE, ORDER BY, INTO
Modify data by using INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements.
This objective may include but is not limited to: row constructors, DELETE FROM FROM, UPDATE FROM, TRUNCATE TABLE
Return data by using the OUTPUT clause.
This objective may include but is not limited to: INSERTED, DELETED, INTO
Modify data by using MERGE statements.
This objective may include but is not limited to: INSERTED, DELETED, OUTPUT
Implement aggregate queries.
This objective may include but is not limited to: built-in aggregate functions, GROUPING SETS, GROUP BY, HAVING
Combine datasets.
This objective may include but is not limited to: CROSS APPLY, OUTER APPLY, all join types; UNION, UNION ALL, INTERSECT, EXCEPT
Apply built-in scalar functions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: CAST and CONVERT; REPLACE; LEN and DATALENGTH; PATINDEX and CHARINDEX
Applying Additional Query Techniques
Implement subqueries.
This objective may include but is not limited to: simple, correlated, scalar, list, table valued
Implement CTE (common table expression) queries.
This objective may include but is not limited to: recursive, non-recursive
Apply ranking functions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: RANK, PARTITION BY, DENSE_RANK, OVER, ROW_NUMBER, NTILE
Control execution plans.
This objective may include but is not limited to: table hints, query hints
Manage international considerations.
This objective may include but is not limited to: collations, defining custom errors, filtering data, sort order, nvarchar, database collation, column collation
Working with Additional SQL Server Components
Integrate Database Mail.
Implement full-text search.
This objective may include but is not limited to: CONTAINS, CONTAINSTABLE, FREETEXT, FREETEXTTABLE, STOPLIST
Implement scripts by using Windows PowerShell and SQL Server Management Objects (SMOs).
This objective may include but is not limited to: cmdlets
Implement Service Broker solutions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: services, queues, messages, message types, message validation, contracts, activation procedures
Track data changes.
This objective may include but is not limited to: change tracking; database audit specification; CHANGETABLE
Working with XML Data
Retrieve relational data as XML.
This objective may include but is not limited to: FOR XML
Transform XML data into relational data.
This objective may include but is not limited to: OPENXML, sp_xml_preparedocument, sp_xml_removedocument
Query XML data.
This objective may include but is not limited to: XQUERY, XPATH
Manage XML data.
This objective may include but is not limited to: XML datatype, XML indexes, XML schema collections
Gathering Performance Information
Capture execution plans.
This objective may include but is not limited to: graphical execution plans; SHOWPLAN
Gather trace information by using the SQL Server Profiler.
Collect output from the Database Engine Tuning Advisor.
This objective may include but is not limited to: prepare a workload
Collect information from system metadata.
This objective may include but is not limited to: Dynamic Management Views (DMVs), catalog views
Designing a Database Strategy
Identify which SQL Server components to use to support business requirements.
This objective may include but is not limited to: SQL Server Agent, DB mail, Service Broker, Full-Text Search, Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC), linked servers
Design a database model.
This objective may include but is not limited to: normalization, entities, entity relationships
Design a data model by using the Entity Framework.
This objective may include but is not limited to: defining and maintaining mapping (query vs. stored proc), defining a data model, entity SQL
Design an application strategy to support security.
This objective may include but is not limited to: application roles, schema ownership, execution context, Windows vs. SQL authentication, permissions and database roles
Design a solution by using Service Broker.
This objective may include but is not limited to: designing services, contracts, activation, routes, message types, queues, remote service binding, priorities
Design a Full-Text Search strategy.
This objective may include but is not limited to: CONTAINS, CONTAINSTABLE, FREETEXT, FREETEXTTABLE
Designing Database Tables
Identify the appropriate usage of new data types.
This objective may include but is not limited to: geography, geometry, hierarchyid, date, time, datetime2, datetimeoffset, varbinary (max) filestream
Design tables.
This objective may include but is not limited to: table width, sizing data types, IN_ROW_DATA (BLOBs), overflow data, sparse columns, computed columns, persisted computed columns
Design data integrity.
This objective may include but is not limited to: primary key, foreign key, check constraint, default constraint, NULL/NOT NULL, unique constraint, DML triggers
Designing Programming Objects
Design T-SQL stored procedures.
This objective may include but is not limited to: execution context (EXECUTE AS), table-valued parameters, determining appropriate way to return data, WITH RECOMPILE/OPTION (RECOMPILE), error handling, TRY/CATCH
Design views.
This objective may include but is not limited to: common table expressions, partitioned views, WITH CHECK OPTION, WITH SCHEMABINDING
Design T-SQL table-valued and scalar functions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: inline table-valued functions vs. views, multi-statement table-valued functions, determinism
Design Common Language Runtime (CLR) table-valued and scalar functions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: assembly PERMISSION_SET, CLR vs. T-SQL, ordered vs. non-ordered
Design CLR stored procedures, aggregates, and types.
This objective may include but is not limited to: assembly PERMISSION_SET, CLR vs. T-SQL, ordered vs. non-ordered, executing static methods on user-defined types, multi-parameter aggregations
Evaluate special programming constructs.
This objective may include but is not limited to: dynamic vs. prepared SQL (CREATE PROCEDURE... WITH EXECUTE AS) procedure, protecting against SQL injection
Designing a Transaction and Concurrency Strategy
Design the locking granularity level.
This objective may include but is not limited to: locking hints, memory consumption
Design for implicit and explicit transactions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: nested transactions, savepoints, TRY/CATCH
Design for concurrency.
This objective may include but is not limited to: hints, transaction isolation level, effect of database option READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT, rowversion and timestamp datatypes
Designing an XML Strategy
Design XML storage.
This objective may include but is not limited to: determining when to use XML for storage, untyped vs. typed (XML schema collection)
Design a strategy to query and modify XML data.
This objective may include but is not limited to: when to use appropriate XPath and XQuery expressions, .query vs. .value, XML indexes for performance, typed vs. untyped, .exist, .modify
Design a query strategy by using FOR XML.
This objective may include but is not limited to: views, FOR XML PATH and EXPLICIT, FOR XML... TYPE
Design a strategy to transform XML into relational data.
This objective may include but is not limited to: .nodes, .value, .query, XQuery and XPath
Designing Queries for Performance
Optimize and tune queries.
This objective may include but is not limited to: optimizer hints, common table expressions (CTEs), search conditions, temporary storage, GROUP BY [GROUPING SETS|CUBE|ROLLUP]
Analyze execution plans.
This objective may include but is not limited to: execution order, logical and physical operators, join operators, minimize resource costs, compare query costs
Evaluate the use of row-based operations vs. set-based operations.
This objective may include but is not limited to: row-based logic vs. set-based logic, batching, splitting implicit transactions
Designing a Database for Optimal Performance
Optimize indexing strategies.
This objective may include but is not limited to: table-valued function, views, filtered indexes, indexed views, clustered and non-clustered, unique
Design scalable database solutions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: scale up vs. scale out, federated databases, distributed partitioned views, scalable shared databases, replication, offloading read-only query (database mirroring)
Resolve performance problems by using plan guides.
This objective may include but is not limited to: object plan guides, SQL plan guides, templates plan guides, dynamic management views
Design a table and index compression strategy.
This objective may include but is not limited to: row vs. page, update frequency, page compression implementation, compressing individual partitions
Design a table and index partitioning strategy.
This objective may include but is not limited to: switching partitions, merging, splitting, staging, creating, schemes and functions